SQL Sort: Using the ORDER BY Command

You already know that to return results, you have to use the SQL SELECT statement. The thing about that is that SQL SELECT just returns rows in a non-deterministic order — in other words, an order determined by the database engine. What if you need a specific order of results turned?

To sort the results of an SQL SELECT statement, you use the ORDER BY clause. It is one of the six standard clauses of the SELECT statement — SELECT, FROM, WHERE, GROUP BY, HAVING and this ORDER BY clause.

In this tutorial, we’ll look at the basics of using ORDER BY, as well as some more advanced SQL ORDER BY topics. By the end, you will understand how to use ORDER BY in your SELECT statements.

Sorting data in SQL

Since SQL retrieves data from a database system, sorting records is a key function in these databases.  When you retrieve more than just a handful of rows or records from a database, you need to be able to sort them in some kind of order so that you can easily find specific rows or records by looking at the list of those retrieved.  

To truly be helpful, a sort clause should be able to sort records by any of the available columns. It should also be able to sort by multiple columns in a specified order and with the order determined by an expression of more than trivial complexity.  The SQL ORDER BY clause can do all of these things.

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Phillip Burton • over one million students so far, I Do Data Limited